Reads the .hosts.erlang file, see the section
Files below. Returns the hosts in this file as a
list, or returns {error, Reason} if the file could not
be read. See file(3) for possible values of
Reason.

This function calls names(Host) for all hosts which
are specified in the Erlang host file .hosts.erlang,
collects the replies and then evaluates ping(Node) on
all those nodes. Returns the list of all nodes that were,
successfully pinged.

Arg defaults to silent.
If Arg == verbose, the function writes information about which
nodes it is pinging to stdout.

This function can be useful when a node is started, and
the names of the other nodes in the network are not initially
known.

The .hosts.erlang file consists of a number of host names
written as Erlang terms. It is looked for in the current work
directory, the user's home directory, and $OTP_ROOT
(the root directory of Erlang/OTP), in that order.

The format of the .hosts.erlang file must be one host
name per line. The host names must be within quotes as shown in
the following example: